The Power of Google

                Google started out as a small, underground company that became noticed because it was innovative and different. It allowed people to search the internet for any information in a way that previously hadn’t been so easy. Google did all the work for the person searching. Instead of having to research from books in a library, or try to find specific sites that related to your exact quarry, Google did most of the work for you. Google is able to look at what you’ve been searching, and sites you’ve been to, and guess what sites you really want to see. This would be purely beneficial, if the way that they were able to cater to your needs with such ease did not come at the expense of privacy. Google is only able to know what sites you’re looking for by having tracked all of the sites that you had been to. It basically knows what you’re going to search before you even finish typing. Before Google organized sites and listed them so cleanly, the internet was a mess of sites that could never be found quickly. Navigating the internet was like wading through tall grass, you could never find what you needed because everything was so jumbled and obscured. Google’s rise to power occurred because they made searching the internet and finding web sites easy, while simultaneously rising as a grassroots-like company that was seen as underground. Now since Google can essentially guess what you’re looking for before you even search for it, they have to have an awful lot of information about you. This is the main problem with Google; it has been collecting information about its users since its creation, and while its mission statement is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” they don’t mention the fact that they organize information about their users as well. Google essentially uses surveillance to make itself useful. It’s impossible to not leave a footprint when using Google, and their privacy policy states that they will pass on information to their “subsidiaries, affiliated companies, or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf.” (Siva, Googlization of us, 85) Basically there’s no real way to know if your privacy is secure while using Google, since they change their policies so often and without warning that what you through was true one day can totally change the next day.

                A personal anecdote relating to the whole subject of privacy occurred my senior year of high school. Facebook has become universally used my parents, teens, teachers, students, and pretty much everybody who wants to network with others. Since privacy is such a tricky thing to control when you have tons of friends online, sometimes the wrong posts get seen by the wrong people. This happened to a fellow student at my school who posted a status that contained a little secret message that was offering drugs for sale. This status was seen by a teacher on facebook, who wasn’t necessarily the student’s friend, but was still able to see past his privacy settings. The student got in huge trouble for the status, and was kicked out of the school. This created a huge amount of debate at school because people thought it was wrong that his privacy was breached in such a way. This is just one example of how privacy can be breached, and how easily information can fall into the wrong hands on the internet. Perhaps if the student had better privacy settings, or just realized that anything he posted could be seen so easily, the expulsion wouldn’t have occurred; due to a lapse in privacy and the authority figure using this lapse to check on students, internet surveillance led to the possibly unnecessary removal of a student from school.

                Google is responsible for a lot of privacy mishaps today, but their new social networking asset, Google +, makes it easy for privacy of users to be maintained. Instead of just having a large list of friends, Google + allows you to organize your different “circles” so that only certain people can see the things you post. With Google +, the anecdote I described could never have occurred and the student’s privacy would have been maintained. Google clearly means well in the things they do, since they try to maintain privacy standards, and are constantly adding to their empire by releasing new things like Google +. The main problem with Google is that it is such a huge company that it controls a huge portion of the internet. Almost everyone starts off a browsing session with Google so that they can find what they’re looking for, people post Blogs that are read my thousands on Google’s Blogger website, and millions of users post and watch content on Google’s Youtube. Since they own so many sites where people go and leave information, they are in control of millions of people’s personal information. While they are determined to protect people’s privacy, this doesn’t mean that they won’t give it up if prompted by the right authority. In addition, if a hacker were to get into Google’s information, millions of people’s information could be stolen, and their privacy could be seriously breached. The realization of Google’s power is why authors like Siva are so opposed to the Googlization of our society since it will lead to less privacy and a completely different idea of knowledge.